Y2HH

I like it when Ozzie is being Ozzie.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 21, 2009 -> 10:04 PM) They said during the game today that he was only hitting 87 on the gun, and to not be surprised if he is not the fifth starter at the beginning of the season. His lack of velocity frightens me a bit, considering who he is. 87 just seems WAY slow for Colon, considering he could hit low 90's without trying just a few years ago, and mid 90's while barely trying. Granted, he does get stronger the more he pitches, but I'm hoping he can consistently hit 92 by the time the season starts.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 12:34 PM) For those providing the services, there is no doubt in my mind. The whole big thing here is what health care costs. The government's whole intention is to go in and make it cheaper for people to get health services. The government will fail in this attempted overhaul, they will instead just subsidize the industry with enormous sums of taxpayer money, or newly printed money. Either way, they will have little effect on cost control. They've tried this many times before and it's always failed, and it will fail again.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 10:44 AM) which would be monumentally awesome in the 6th or 7th spot It would be, but he brings a mega-primadonna personality with him.

QUOTE (CryptviLL @ Mar 14, 2009 -> 11:09 AM) sweet thanks for the heads up You're avatar makes me cringe every single time I see it. I don't know why. I hate that guy.

I was going to say something similar to this, but I understood what he meant -- just like you understood what I meant. That said, I see whut u did thar.

I suppose this is a very good point, but there isn't much alternative for our leadoff/#2 spot. If it's not Alexei batting #2, then I'd have to say stick AJ in there. The issue is we don't have great personal for traditional #1 and #2 hitters, so we have to deal with what we have.

I also like the idea of Alexi as our 2 hole hitter...

QUOTE (greg775 @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 01:59 AM) Very nice. You got me caught up to date. I read every word of your long post. Thank you very much. I'm caught up and I like what I hear from you about Fields. Wow on Owens. Sounds like he's done as a Sox if he doesn't make the squad. Why are you surprised about Owens? People seem to think he's some 21 year old up and comer when he's approaching 30.

QUOTE (Wedge @ Mar 16, 2009 -> 09:47 AM) If Anderson could bring a bat to CF, I think I'd be happy. Fixed.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Mar 14, 2009 -> 10:19 AM) All good points. I disagree slightly about the severity, but we agree that there can be better cost controls in place. It's the talking point about "wealth distribution" that I object to. We have created a disconnect about why we pay taxes. It is about "wealth distribution" and to "stimulate the economy" but never about actually paying for the world class services we receive. I have spent a fair amount of time in countries with much lower tax rates, and no one here really would swap that for the US. If we are going to live at the Hilton, you cannot pay Motel 6 rates. And yes, that means the employees there get paid better. You hit on a very good point here. I've also traveled elsewhere, and I have to say I think the US is #1, not because I don't know, but because I DO know. What we accept as normal, others would EASILY see as living a 5 star lifestyle.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Mar 13, 2009 -> 10:41 PM) Yes, they take your taxes and redistribute it to cops, and teachers, and highway workers, firefighters, and etc. etc. etc. Everyone wants to live in a first class country but pay third world tax rates. And I have no problem with the redistributing it to them, but if you honestly think it's stops there, then they've got you fooled. It also goes into the pockets of the gov/mayor/other elected officials, their friends companies pockets, and 50 other ways to skim the systems pockets. Then, it goes to the people who sit at home, have 8 kids and collect welfare with absolutely no plan nor ambition to ever get off of welfare. A first class country wouldn't allow that system to be exploited such as it is. It's called fiscal responsibility. Our government, federal, state or local has no fiscal responsibility. And why should they, they aren't paying for any of it anyway...we are! They increase tax all the time, on everything, yet they're still in the hole. Fine, up the IL tax, I bet they're STILL in the hole and their budget deficit gets WORSE, not better as it should. Then, increase them some more...may as well, it's not like anyone will do much about it. Then, after that, increase them even more -- I look forward to 60% of my paychecks going to this kind of bulls***, because we're already headed that direction. First I'm taxed on what I make...then I'm taxed again on the SAME MONEY when I buy something...and then, heaven forbid I sell something, they'll tax me AGAIN.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Mar 13, 2009 -> 09:48 AM) No one likes tax increases, but how do we plug a $9 BILLION hole? Not many options. I have a wild and crazy idea...how about by not spending more than you have? I'd love that new Fararri, but you see...I don't have the money to pay for it...SO I DON'T BUY IT! Why are these budgets out of control?! Because they don't follow them. When a person creates a budget and it falls to 0, it means they stop spending, that's the POINT of the budget. When it comes to the modern government, across the board, budgets mean nothing, because after the money runs out, they just keep spending more...and more. And no matter how much they raise tolls, taxes, sales taxes, liquor taxes, water taxes, fuel taxes...breathing taxes...they still don't stop spending. As much as they create, they burn 2x more and the deficits get WORSE and WORSE despite these tax hikes.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 10:39 AM) There is this misconception that the print media is dying. It isn't. Community papers, which make up at least 80% of newspapers, if not more, in America are doing fine with many having steady and rising circulations. It's only the big newspapers that are struggling and that's why it gets reported as a print-wide epidemic. Fact is most newspapers are still very profitable, it's the new owners of papers have too much credit debt from when they bought the papers and need to cut labor to make it all back. The print media is going to change, but die it won't. Sounds like a solid argument. There are defiantly print media companies still doing very well, but the big ones, like the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Sun Times have become wasteful over spenders and this is their reward. They need to retract, refocus their efforts and they would be fine...but keeping the course they've been on is the road to bankruptcy. It's still not my job to keep them in business, that's their managements job. And although print media isn't dying right now, it's future isn't very bright with most technologies being able to deliver these same articles/papers via wireless. Easier to carry one device that constantly updates than buying a new paper every day.

QUOTE (shipps @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 10:15 AM) This is really sad. Other than not wanting people to lose their jobs from these papers I think people dont care if these papers go. You are not going to know what you are missing until its gone and then everyone will be sorry we didnt do more to keep these papers going. It's not our job to keep a business moving along with the times, it's the job of the business itself to recognize that print media is dying and find a way to move into the future. We don't still use horses/carriages because cars were invented -- I'm sure the carriage makers back in the day were quite disappointed, too...but such is life. I won't miss these papers, I haven't read a newspaper in years. By the time they're printed/distributed, the news is already old.

QUOTE (daa84 @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 09:40 AM) each fast food place has good things and bad things.... McD - chicken biscuits, any breakfast sandwich really, mcchicken, fries....not a huge fan of their burgers but not bad.... BK - love the onion rings and fries, breakfast - french toast sticks = awesome, i hate their chicken, burgers are ok Wendys - we had two within a mile of campus in college so i ate it alot, and wendys went from underrated to overrated IMO. fries are the worst of the big chains, burgers aren't very good. Spicy Chicken is still heavenly, nuggets are good and frostys will always be good White Castle - Love sliders. can only eat em about once a year though. bad fries though, but good onion rings http://www.sporcle.com/games/fastfood.php how many can you get? some i haven't even heard of I got 25/50. Some I've never even heard of, a few I missed, like Papa John's and Domino's.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 09:47 AM) Grady Sizemore would be the guy who I believe would be the biggest incremental improvement to the Sox. He would solve our weakest two spots, CF and the leadoff spot. There are guys out there that are better, but Grady would do more to finish the Sox team than anyone else. Agreed. It would also weaken the Indians, which is like a bonus.

QUOTE (scenario @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 09:27 AM) Living proof that you don't need to know what you're talking about to be a sportswriter. I've been getting the feeling that these days, you don't need to know much about anything to be considered an "expert" in just about any media driven field...you just need to know someone to get you a job, or somehow get the job without knowing anyone, but that's much harder to do.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 09:38 AM) You probably just buy a 1983 jersey personalized with Quentin's number and name, then get him to autograph it and save a lot of money. That wouldn't be for charity, now would it?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 08:27 AM) If it was that easy, how many people did it? You make it sound like it was the most obvious thing in the world. In hindsight it is. In hindsight I would have sold any financial I could think of as of about Dec 31, 2007. It would have been being in the right place at the right time. How many people actually did that? A large part of being in the right place is having some expertease to know that this situation you are being presented with is actually an opportunity of a lifetime. My father did it, and made quite a lot of money doing it. But he's not on tv telling people how great he was, either, nor giving others investment advice with the slogan, "Let's make some money." And being that trillions of dollars of wealth was created through the 90's, a lot of people did it. They may not have sold (which is their own fault), but the market in the 90's made a LOT of people millionaires/billionaires. My point is, if you were in the stock market back then it was much easier than it is now to continue making those types of gains. The issue is, they continue to sell themselves on their past success that they can still do it, when it's obvious now to a lot of people, that they cannot.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 08:00 AM) We're talking about the quacks, e.g. the CNBC network. I'm not slamming the finance field as a whole. Plenty of financial planners are very, very competent and make a lot of money for their clients and themselves. It's more of a media-in-general issue because the loud mouths making the crazy predictions will get the coverage/ TV shows, not the even-tempered pragmatist who carefully weighs and analyzes the stock data. That's due to the way the finance industry works. If any of these guys ever got lucky in their past for being in the right place at the right time, it's really easy for them to spin it and show how much of an expert they are via becoming millionaires off of their luck of being in the right place at the right time. Like I said in a previous post, Cramer did a majority of his investing in the 80's, and anyone who had some cash and sunk it into almost any stock in the 80's would have ended up with massive gains if they had left it there. He took that success and spun a career of expertise on it, when in fact you didn't need much expertise to make money if you invested in the 80's and waited until the 90's when the market whet through a split/split/split/rocket phase. For example, if you picked just about ANY pharmaceutical company in the 80's or even in 1990 and bought just 500 shares you'd have been rich. Take Pfizer for instance, the stock cost about 2.50$ a share in 1990. From 1991 to 1999 it split 3 times 2 to 1, and then split another time 3 to 1 for good measure. You're 500 shares were now 12000 shares. At it's peak after all of those splits it hit 45$, let's just say for this example you didn't sell at the top, but sold at 38$. You just sold 456,000$ worth of stock...and that was from 1 single 500 share investment. That's the era Cramer was in. The success some of these guys had wasn't about expertise, it was about being in the right place at the right time.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Mar 10, 2009 -> 10:52 PM) Ok, hell, I'm not an IT guy at all but I at least would know to run a process list (and at the top of that process list is the whole damn thing he asked). Yea, that should tell you how many people in the IT industry don't actually belong here. They are quickly being weeded out now, with the economy the way it is, and they won't be coming back. Most of these are leftovers from the IT tech boom where anyone who knew anyone could get a job in IT, even if they knew absolutely nothing about it.

QUOTE (G&T @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 07:52 AM) This is essentially what I did when I was your age and confused. I took all my pre-reqs and decided on a major based on the pre-req that I enjoyed the most. I had an awesome history prof and I ended up with a History degree. This has another benefit. When you do figure out what you want to do, you will have all the garbage classes out of the way and your last couple years in school will be much more enjoyable. This is very true. I loved classes that involved discussion groups/classes as they added to the learning process. I was never a fan of pure lectures, I found them boring and mundane. I was also lucky enough to be one of those guys who shows up with no books, doesn't bother highlighting anything in said books (like TONS of people do), and I only studied if I thought I needed an A, as I was happy not studying and getting B's. Yea, I was that annoying guy who hardly ever showed up to lectures and still got B's or A's.

I don't want to sound overly optimistic or anything, but I'm really *really* liking what our starting rotation is looking like.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2009 -> 07:08 AM) Like I said, tell me one single person who was putting a sell rating out before the public information was out there. Its more than just Jim Cramer that pisses me off about this whole thing. Its another piece of the stated White House effort to take individuals, demonize them, and make them responsibile for all that is evil in the world. Once they do that, then they get to stand up and say they have the solution. Personally I don't see how the "politics of divisiveness" is getting left behind when the stated White House strategy is to personally pick individuals out and try to paint and entire party of people like that one person. To me it sounds like the last eight years, just like I said it would. The funny part is that everyone who makes fun of Rush Limbaugh is taking the Rush of the left wing's infotainment show and using it just like the right wing uses Rush to advance their cause. No one really seems to get that. In reality you can take any stock picker and find some glaring errors. Its an near impossible science, which is why the SP outpreforms the vast majority of stock pickers on an annual basis. Its not different than the experts in any other field. Tell me one scientist who can tell me exactly what the weather is going to be like in a week. Find me one who can tell me exactly when the next great quake is going to strike in the world and where. How about one who knows how big the universe is. You can keep going on with this, but you get my point. The fact that Rush Stewart and the rest of the left wing is after Cramer is because of one simple fact. He questioned Barack Obama, and has the respect of enough people to potentially change some minds about him. For a party that a few years ago was claiming it was patriotic to question the President, they sure seem to like to turn everything into a personal battle very quickly. I agree. I think all of these experts are frauds. And I agree with your assessment of the current situation with the White House suddenly having very thin skin.